Want something like Emily St. John Mandel? We get this question quite a lot from fans of the author’s best-selling dystopian novel Station Eleven or her more literary mysteries starting with her debut Last Night in Montreal. Here are some read-alikes with similar qualities to St. John Mandel’s beautiful and haunting novels:
Continue reading “Read-alikes for the Emily St. John Mandel fan”
While many of us are not getting our usual fill of beaches this summer, nothing says we can’t indulge in some beach reads. Not that a good romance can’t be enjoyed year-round!
Conventionally Yours by Annabeth Albert is set in the world of tabletop games and Conrad and Alden have been bitter rivals but must work together on a road trip to a major con (oh! may these tabletop and gaming conventions return!). Can they work past their rivalry when they both want to win? Are their growing feelings for one another worth fighting for? This is a sweet M/M romance featuring two 20-somethings finding themselves and exploring their passions, in love and life. Continue reading “Hot New Romance by Local Authors!”
Book Bingo is still underway, and some of those squares may be giving you trouble. Here are some suggestions for the mentioned in another book square.
The beauty of this category is that there are so many books about books to choose from. Additionally, so many books mention other books in them, naturally and surreptitiously, that the possibilities are endless. I just finished a novel, Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis, which is about five queer women’s lives under a dictatorship in Uruguay and this cropped up towards the end:
She was happy. Even under the regime, she managed to be happy. Her favorite book, now, was a used paperback she’d found at the street market at Tristán Narvaja: a translation of To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, who was British, and dead now, La Venus said, we were never alive at the same time and yet she saw right into me, this book is my Bible and Lily Briscoe is the only Jesus I need.”
Hopefully, you find inspiration in such serendipitous ways! Continue reading “#BookBingoNW2020: Mentioned in another book”
The beauty of our present moment where more of our lives are convening on screens is that you can catch more author events and panels than ever before. On Juneteenth this year an incredible array of Black authors for readers of all ages met as a part of the Juneteenth Book Fest to discuss their writing, publishing, readers, the state of the world, and how important it is to celebrate and uplift Black voices in books.
The Juneteenth Book Fest offered a full day of panels featuring Black authors and their stories. You can find the full series here, but here are some highlights:
The “Capturing the Moment: What it Means to Write Black Stories Right Now” panel features authors Tiffany D. Jackson, Angie Thomas, Bethany C. Morrow, and L.L. McKinney, moderated by Julian Winters, “discuss what it means to write Black stories in this moment, during this movement, for change.”
The “Black Love: Writing Black Romance” panel with Alyssa Cole, Rebekah Weatherspoon, Beverly Jenkins, and Farrah Rochon is a delight! They share insights on traditional publishing versus self-publishing, the challenges Black romance writers face, and the joys of writing Black love stories. Oh, and Beverly Jenkins starts smoking and singing the praises of speculative fiction towards the end!
Continue reading “In Case You Missed It: Juneteenth Book Fest”
#BookBingoNW2020 is upon us!
One of the new categories this summer is Afrofuturism. If you saw Black Panther or watched Janelle Monaé’s emotion picture for their album “Dirty Computer,” then chances are you have already been exposed to Afrofuturism. But have you read any Afrofuturist books?
Dictionary.com defines Afrofuturism as (noun)
“a cultural movement that uses the frame of science fiction and fantasy to reimagine the history of the African diaspora and to invoke a vision of a technically advanced and generally hopeful future in which Black people thrive: this movement is expressed through art, cinema, literature, music, fashion, etc.” Here is a sample from the list to get you started!
